Petroleum refineries are the most fired-equipment-intensive industrial facilities in the world. A single large refinery may operate 30-60 process heaters, a dozen or more boilers, multiple HRSGs, sulfur recovery units, flare systems, and thermal oxidizers - all firing refinery fuel gas, natural gas, or liquid fuels in an interconnected system where every piece of equipment affects every other. CPE engineers the fired equipment, boilers, steam systems, waste heat recovery, and emissions controls inside the refinery fence.
Industries
Refineries
Petroleum refineries are the most fired-equipment-intensive industrial facilities in the world. A single large refinery may operate 30-60 process heaters, a dozen or more boilers, multiple HRSGs, sulfur recovery units,…
Fired Heaters
Process heaters consume the majority of a refinery’s fuel, making fired heater performance the single largest lever on energy efficiency and operating cost. CPE provides engineering across every configuration found in refinery service - vertical cylindrical, horizontal tube box, helical coil, direct-fired reboilers, and multi-service heaters with multiple coils in a common radiant section. Our scope includes heater performance assessment and diagnosis (tube skin temperature surveys, draft profiles, flue gas analysis, heat balance calculations), burner evaluation and specification (low-NOx technologies, BMS design per NFPA 86 and API 556, multi-fuel and dual-fuel systems), and tube remaining life assessment per API 530 including creep life, oxidation rates, and heater re-rating.
CPE also addresses the specialty heater services that define refinery thermal operations. Delayed coker charge heaters - heating heavy vacuum residuum to 900-950°F at high velocity to prevent premature tube coking - require simultaneous consideration of heat transfer, process chemistry, and mechanical design. Catalytic reformer interheaters operate in a high-temperature, hydrogen-rich environment where hydrogen attack and embrittlement drive materials evaluation per API 941. CPE brings the process-specific knowledge that these services demand.
Boiler and Steam Systems
Refinery steam systems typically operate at three or more header pressure levels with steam generated by multiple sources (fired boilers, HRSGs, waste heat boilers, process heat recovery) and consumed across the entire complex. CPE provides boiler selection and specification, performance assessment, combustion tuning, and capacity evaluation for utility boilers firing refinery fuel gas and natural gas. We model integrated multi-pressure steam systems - mapping generation and consumption at each level, evaluating letdown station and desuperheater performance, and quantifying the impact of inefficiencies including trap failures, excessive blowdown, and low condensate return rates.
Waste Heat Recovery
CPE designs waste heat boilers and HRSGs for refinery applications - including FCCU regenerator flue gas recovery (addressing erosive catalyst fines, aggressive acid dewpoint corrosion, and thermal cycling), SRU tail gas incinerator exhaust, and gas turbine cogeneration exhaust. Process heater stack gas at 600-900°F represents the single largest recoverable heat loss in most refineries - CPE designs economizers and air preheaters for heater stacks, managing the trade-off between heat recovery and acid dewpoint corrosion risk from sulfur in the fuel gas. We also perform pinch analysis and heat integration studies, and evaluate ORC systems for low-grade waste heat streams where other recovery paths are not practical.
Sulfur Recovery Units
Claus process SRUs are fired equipment installations with specific combustion, metallurgical, and emissions requirements. CPE provides reaction furnace burner design and optimization (air/acid gas ratio control, flame stability with variable H₂S concentration, contaminant management), refractory specification for 1800-2500°F service, waste heat boiler engineering addressing tube sheet corrosion and ammonium salt fouling, catalytic converter reheater systems, and tail gas incinerator design. As refineries shift to heavier and higher-sulfur crude slates, SRU capacity frequently becomes a refinery-wide bottleneck - CPE evaluates limitations across the unit and designs modifications to increase throughput.
Flare Systems
CPE provides flare tip selection and sizing (elevated, ground-level enclosed, and multi-point), flare gas recovery system evaluation, header and collection system design for the full range of relief scenarios, pilot and ignition systems, and flare management plans for compliance with EPA flare efficiency requirements.
Power Generation and Cogeneration
CPE provides steam turbine generator selection and performance assessment, gas turbine cogeneration HRSG design and duct firing evaluation, heat balance modeling across steam system pressure levels, and feasibility studies evaluating power self-generation against grid purchase - including economic dispatch optimization for refineries in deregulated electricity markets.
Emissions Control
Refinery emissions control spans combustion sources, process sources, and fugitive sources. CPE’s scope focuses on the equipment-specific engineering that determines compliance: low-NOx burners, SCR and SNCR on heaters and boilers (addressing catalyst poisoning from sulfur compounds), FCCU wet gas scrubbers, ESPs, and third-stage separator cyclones for particulate, CO boiler engineering for partial-burn FCCU regenerators, and SRU optimization and tail gas treating to reduce SO₂ at the source. CPE designs systems that comply with the overlapping Refinery MACT I and II, Petroleum Refinery NSPS Subparts J and Ja, and applicable boiler MACT and NSPS standards.
Controls and Instrumentation
CPE provides BMS design per NFPA 85/86 and API 556 with integration into the refinery DCS and SIS, combustion control systems (oxygen trim, cross-limiting, draft control) that respond to process-side load changes while maintaining stable combustion, and safety instrumented function identification, SIL determination, and SIS design per ISA 84/IEC 61511.
Turnaround and Brownfield Engineering
Refinery capital projects are almost exclusively brownfield. CPE provides 3D laser scanning and reality capture, clash detection and routing studies in congested process units, hot tie-in planning and execution engineering, temporary facilities engineering during construction and commissioning, and turnaround scope development with sequencing, resource loading, and critical path analysis.
Codes and Standards
CPE executes refinery work under API 530, 556, 560, 579-1/ASME FFS-1, and 941, ASME Sections I, II, IV, and VIII, ASME B31.3, NFPA 85/86, ISA 84/IEC 61511, NACE MR0103/ISO 17945, EPA Refinery NSPS Subparts J and Ja, Refinery MACT I and II (Subparts CC and UUU), Boiler MACT (Subpart DDDDD), and state air quality and Title V programs.
Why CPE
Refinery engineering is specialist work. The fired heater technologies, metallurgical damage mechanisms, fuel gas compositions, emissions regulations, and operational constraints are specific to petroleum refining - and an engineering firm that treats a process heater like a boiler, or specifies carbon steel where Cr-Mo is required, or ignores the acid dewpoint implications of sulfur in the fuel gas creates problems that cost the refinery far more than the original engineering fee.
CPE brings process heater and fired equipment expertise - not boiler expertise repurposed for refinery service. The firm understands the API standards that govern heater design and tube life, the metallurgical damage mechanisms that drive materials selection, the fuel gas variability that affects combustion design, and the overlapping MACT and NSPS framework that determines compliance strategy. That specialist depth - applied from the crude unit charge heater to the SRU reaction furnace to the utility boiler house - is what CPE delivers.
Work in one of
these industries?
Tell us what you are working on and we will let you know how CPE can help.